North Star glows bright in culinary sky

Published 4:00 am, Friday, June 25, 1999

1999-06-25 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- EVERY 10,000 years or so the world gets a new North Star. (It's complicated astronomical-type stuff. Don't ask.)

San Francisco only had to wait six months. (It's complicated gastronomical-type stuff. I asked North Star restaurant co-owner Brad Levy and he said, Yadda-yadda-yadda, the first chef didn't work out.) So five months after it opened in December, Levy moved over from the kitchen of his other eatery, the red-hot-as-it-is-tiny Firefly, tweaked North Star's menu and brought in Ricardo Cabrera from Timo's Norte to do the day-to-day cheffing. After all, in this town six months can seem like 10,000 years if your restaurant isn't firing on all cylinders.

Whatever it was about the old North Star that piqued Levy's dissatisfaction, the new North Star is one of the brightest lights in The City's neighborhood restaurant firmament. It's a terribly cute little place in the Potrero District, modest but stylish in a low-key, low-budget sort of way, with polished hardwood floors and a teensy zinc-topped bar and golden-yellow walls hung with vibrantly colorful art. Very pretty and easy to like, though it can get pretty noisy when things start rockin' toward the weekend.

The menu is loaded with what you might call "Contemporary California Comfort Cuisine." Alliteration aside, that means food that is never more inventive than it is good to eat, whether a crisp tempura-fried ahi sushi roll or palate-tingling "Bayou Gumbo" or light and unexpectedly luscious strawberry-kiwi "Pavlova." The staff is young and chatty, but they get the job done and seem to genuinely enjoy the interaction with their customers.

North Star's customers should enjoy its remarkably well-chosen wine list, a short story to other restaurants' tomes, but one that nonetheless neatly splits the difference between excitement and satisfaction. Sure, it includes a bunch of all-the-usual-suspects wines, but it also features plenty of wines that will add a touch of spice and adventure to a meal.

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Robert Sinskey's 1997 Vin Gris of Pinot Noir ($29) is one, an elegant Pouilly Fume of the same vintage from Celestin Blondeau is another ($25). And on San Francisco's typically frigid "summer" evenings, the 1996 Jade Mountain La Provencal (a lusty blend of Syrah and Mourvedre) ($30) or complex, medium-bodied 1997 Wild Hog Pinot Noir ($38) will help chase the chill away.

All this adds up to a great little neighborhood restaurant, the kind of place that makes San Francisco such a superlative dining town. New York may have the corner on tony, high-end establishments, L.A. has more flash, New Orleans has a long and rich culinary history. But no city in the country delivers better and more exciting, diverse and affordable dining in every neighborhood large enough to have its own spot on the map than San Francisco.

WHERE TO begin? Perhaps with chunky Tuscan bread soup ($5.50), so fresh-tasting and tomato-y and garlicky it was positively indecent, or a lovely salad of watercress and Belgian endive with little clumps of Gorgonzola, spiced pecans, Asian pears and a robust, intriguing caramelized apple vinaigrette ($6.25).

Or maybe with the restaurant's signature, the aforementioned ahi maki tempura ($7.25) - tuna, avocado and tobiko wrapped in sushi rice and nori, then battered and deep-fried and served with the traditional soy-wasabi dipping sauce. In truth, the frying could have been better - our roll was too greasy - but there was no faulting the winning combination of flavors or ingredients.

No faults either in a mild-tasting salt cod croquette ($6.25), a fist-sized round of pungent salt cod mellowed with potato set in a smooth, verdant puree of mint and cilantro, or in the autumn equivalent of that summery Tuscan soup, earthy crimini mushrooms sauteed and piled atop crispy garlic-Gruyere toasts ($5.75).

Carpaccio ($6.50) was a pleasant riff on a familiar theme, pairing thick, pleasantly chewy slices of rosy-red beef with a few greens, fried capers (I love the crunchy explosion of briny flavor) and lemon olive oil (a nice touch that would have been nicer had there been a spoonful or two more of it).

There were other nice touches too, like the creamy corn and green chili spoonbread that graced a pair of grilled, barbecue sauce-slathered pork chops cooked past pink but still moist and tender ($14.75). Also like the "extra special hot and crunchy" Vietnamese-style salad and sweet-salty five-spice potato chips that accompanied skewers of marinated prawns (OK) and scallops (yeah!) ($15.25).

An evening's special of flatiron steak with grilled asparagus and potato-wild mushroom "decadence" (like a more rustic, less-caloric gratin) ($14.75) was nice too, though it didn't tickle the palate like the "swamp kickin' " (read: butt kickin') Bayou gumbo ($13.75) or chicken "two way" curry with almond rice pilaf ($12.75).

The gumbo was great stuff - a moderately smoky, okra-thickened broth made with a nutty, medium-brown roux and loaded down with chunks of chicken, andouille and rock shrimp. Like all the best spicy dishes, the heat built up slowly, increasing bit by bit, bite by bite, until your forehead started sweating and your taste buds started dancing in your mouth. The chicken wasn't too shabby either - half a bird, the breast pan-fried, leg and thigh braised, all tender and juicy - in a mild, creamy coconut milk-tamarind curry sauce.

Of course, no California restaurant would be complete without a seared-rare ahi plate (I think it's part of the permit requirements), and North Star has a good one. It involves a sizable hunk of the dense, meaty fish laid over roasted fingerling potatoes and lightly wilted arugula, jazzed up with a guacamole-like avocado-corn salsa and ringed by a tart red pepper vinaigrette that cuts through all the richness and gives focus to the dish.

Desserts (all $5) come from North Star's sister (and adjacent) Little Dipper Bakery (North Star and Little Dipper, get it?). Only four are offered, three of which I can heartily recommend. Inexplicably, the lone clunker is the only chocolate potion. Chocolate "triptych" consists of a dry, bland flourless chocolate cake, gluey-textured chocolate pot du creme and icky-sweet caramel-filled chocolate tart. Considering that chocolate is more popular than sex, nowadays, at least according to some surveys, ya gotta wonder how the bakery let this one get away.

ON THE OTHER hand, if you're a chocophobe rather than a chocophile, then the rest of North Star's sweet things are downright heavenly. There's a cookbook-perfect creme bru^lee, nothing unusual but quite delicious.

There's a plate of really good, fresh-baked cookies, just in case Mom has stopped sending those care packages. (Or never did.) And there's a wonderful strawberry-kiwi

"Pavlova," an Australian dessert named for a Russian dancer that involves baked meringue, whipped cream, the relevant fruit and a bracing passion fruit sauce.

So in another 10,000 years or so, if you look to the sky you'll see the newest North Star. If you don't want to wait that long, or you're just really hungry for good, inventive, comforting, affordable food in the kind of restaurant that has made San Francisco the dining destination it is today, look to the Potrero neighborhood. You'll see the newest North Star.